Almost 20 years ago I conducted an interview with Cosey Fanni Tutti for the
third issue of Progress Report. This was an issue which concentrated on women
artists such as Cosey, Annie Sprinkle, Cassandra Stark, Carolee Schneeman etc.
The forthcoming release of Desertshore, Throbbing Gristles cover of the classic
Nico album, seemed to make this a good time to catch up with Cosey and put a few
questions to her. As Desertshore has yet to be released and not all of its
details (who the vocalists are etc) have been made public Cosey was unable to
answer most of my questions regarding it. The interview touched on other
subjects too and here are Cosey’s answers. The interview was conducted via email
by David Bourgoin.

PR:
Some of the tracks for Desertshore recently premiered at the AV
festival.... the reports of it came back as a big success how did it
feel to you?

COSEY: Yes it was
an amazing response to the tracks we played. A very emotionally charged
atmosphere. Taking the tracks from the studio into a live situation was
tricky but it also helped us make some final decisions about levels,
sounds etc.

PR: You
reissued a lot of the TG back catalogue last year. How did you go about
remastering them did you have to bake the old tapes or was it slightly
less drastic than that?

COSEY:
We were fortunate that Mute had baked the old original master tapes and
made digital masters. So Chris worked from those which was great because
the new reissues (rather than previous ones) are from the original tapes

PR: There are
few omissions such as In The Shadow of the Sun, Journey Through the
Body, Mission of Dead Souls, TG1 etc that the Grey area put out on CD in
the early 90s. Are these likely to be re-issued at some point too?

COSEY: We haven't made any decisions on that yet. It's been incredibly
time consuming doing the reissues and Desertshore so we'd like some time
away from TG to focus on our own work.

PR:
There's presumably quite a lot of other TG archive material (some of which has
turned up on labels like Dossier) rehearsals sessions and jams. I would imagine
there are plenty of TG fans out there who would love to see a box set of these
getting properly mastered and cleaned up. Do you have any plans to put out
anything like that?

COSEY:
Well like I said, time is the crucial point here - that and keeping booleggers
at bay. But TG has always made a point of making their output available so it
will surface in some form at some point.

PR:
There were plenty of TGs shows after the release of TGV. There was an extensive
tour of the USA. Were many of these videoed and is there going to be a TGV2?

COSEY:
There's so much material it's crazy. Where would one start?

PR:
At the last TG gig in London you seemed to be playing a lot of new material. Had
any of that been recorded at all in the studio ready for another album? Can we
expect to see any of those tracks on a sort of post TG album or even maybe an
X-TG album?

COSEY:
Sleazy, Chris and myself had done a lot of experimenting in our studio and we
have recordings of that. A lot of the new material for the last gig was a taster
for the new direction we were heading in.

PR:
X-TG in it's brief existence looked like it was going to be an interesting
project. Have any of the ideas that were generated in that short period of time
been carried forward to any other projects?

COSEY:
No, we've kept all X-TG experiments and ideas as X-TG. There's studio recordings
and good recordings of the two gigs we did as X-TG. We were all fired up and in
the throes of making new instruments when Sleazy died. It was a catastrophic
time in every way imaginable. Just hours before he died I was emailing him about
X-TG ideas and what we'd do when he came over in a week's time. So much
excitement and energy for our creative future, just gone.

PR:
Wasn't there a recording session with TG and S.C.U.M? If so how did that go and
is anything happening with that?

COSEY:
No TG never did a recording session with S.C.U.M. TG were asked to do a remix
but only Chris and myself were really into what they were doing...hence the
delay until Chris and I did a remix for them.

PR:
With all the TG activity over the last few years it must make finding time for
Carter Tutti projects harder but you've been pretty busy there as well. How easy
was it to move between the two projects? Was there much cross over in the
working methods and/or any similarity in the equipment set ups you use?

COSEY:
We were determined not to lose sight of our own sound projects during TG
activities. All TG members felt the same way but so much of the actual
workload of TG ended up in our laps, mainly for practical and historical
working practice reasons. It worked out but it took its toll and it's
extremely exhausting. The lift we got from our own gigs is really
energising. Carter Tutti Void was such a gem moment. One of those rare
times when everything just 'is'. It ran so smoothly and I think that was
because we made it as free as possible from the start. No
preconceptions, no pressure, just pure enjoyment in making sound
together. We were all lucky that we had the same open relaxed approach.
It was a case of 'let's see what happens' and it was fantastic.

Working methods remain largely the same as always but with flexibility
for the project and accommodating the people we work with. The joy of
working with others is that you have to move outside the familiar and
explore other sounds, equipment and methods.

PR:
It's been a while now since you moved from being Chris and Cosey to
being Carter Tutti. But can you explain why you changed to Carter Tutti
and what you see as the essential differences?

COSEY:
We changed because we had moved so far away from what 'Chris & Cosey'
meant in terms of sound that the name just didn't suit the

material any more. That's another reason we call our revisiting of the C&C
material 'Carter Tutti Play Chris & Cosey'. We are different people.

PR:
Your Carter Tutti plays Chris and Cosey seems to have been a roaring success.
Are we likely to see a repeat of that?

COSEY:
We're thinking of maybe not doing it any more after this year. It's difficult
because we thought we'd do one C&C gig just out of curiosity and because a
friend's been asking us for 8 years. Then it just went crazy with gig offers.
It's been so very successful, and totally unexpected. A case of 'do we / don't
we carry on' now.

PR:
Some time ago on your Twitter account you mentioned a book? It's now available
for pre ordering on Amazon. Could you tell us a little bit about what's in it?

COSEY:
The book is called 'COSEY COMPLEX' and consists of printed works from the
original event that took place at the ICA in March 2010. The event was an all
day affair organised by Maria Fusco and Richard Birkett who invited submissions
and invited commissions from artists to create a work and explore 'Cosey' as
methodolgy. So I was moved from noun to verb and the works didn't necessarily
reference me directly. There were papers, discussion panels, audio and visual
works. It was such a wonderful day to have such great artists create amazing
works from the starting point of 'Cosey'. Everyone approached it differently and
that's what was so rich about the day.

I was able to enjoy it because it wasn't directly about me.

PR:
You've just released your album of the live performance you did with Nik
of Factory Floor at the Mute event at the Roundhouse. I don't believe
you've played with another guitarist before how did that feel? I believe
the pieces were improvisations but was any sort of direction or themes
arranged beforehand.

COSEY:
It was great having another guitarist in the mix. It moved me into
different territories. The tracks had a basic rhythm (by Chris) as their
foundation. Then we all jammed on the top. We did a couple of run
throughs at our studio just to see how we all gelled before taking it
into a live situation. The compatibility was just so instant. I don't
remember any moments or sounds that didn't feel right.

PR:
You've had Nik from Factory Floor playing with Carter Tutti, Chris
playing with Factory Floor for a couple of dates. Anything else lined up
collaborating wise?

COSEY:
Ha! It's a bit like Chris & Cosey this...the response to Carter Tutti
Void has been overwhelming and totally unexpected. Gig offers keep on
coming but we're all so busy with our own projects. But we're
considering maybe doing some next year.

PR:
What other plans do you have for Carter Tutti and other projects for the
rest of this year?

COSEY:
My head's spinning with Desertshore right now but we have plans to start
working on a new Carter Tutti album at the end of this year. We've got a
folder of ideas already. Alongside that we want to release some of the
Harmonic Coaction series of shows and of course Chris has his own CCCL
project ongoing, making new sound boxes. It's such a productive period
for us at the moment and we're still getting excited by new gear and
ideas.